All the World's a Screen

Charlotte Gould and Paul Sermon

Between 4pm and 6pm on the 28th May the MadLab audience in Manchester joined participants at Hangar.org in Barcelona, bringing a mix of eccentric players, creative interventions and surreal improvised performances in spontaneous interactive moments of hilarity, emotional exchanges and thought provoking dialogues. Whilst audience members in Barcelona had the opportunity to construct sets and edit scenes, participants at MadLab in Manchester replied with improvised props and costumes to provoke a juxtaposed montage of impromptu performances and dialogues. This live telematic performance was presented at Hangar.org in Poblenou as part of their open studio season.

On the evening of Saturday 28th May audiences in Manchester and Barcelona were joined together on screen for the first time to create their own interactive generative cinema experience complete with sets, costumes and props. Employing the scenographic techniques of Alfred Hitchcock the artists created a miniature film set in which the remote audiences acted and directed their own movie, transporting participants into animated environments and sets where they created their own unique narrative.

Members of the audience in Barcelona were able to decide on the context of this interactive telematic performance by using an iphone app to select between seven different background sets, which consisted of live webcams scenes and animated environments. The participants in Barcelona could also stand in front of a choma-key blue screen and position themselves within these stage sets. Members of the audience in Manchester were then transported into this telepresent experience via their own blue-box studio to join the ‘players’ in Barcelona as they journeyed through the ‘Seven stages of man’.

This immersive interactive installation pushes the boundaries of telematic art and generative cinema, combining the possibilities of telepresent performance with miniature scale-models and animated scenes for the development of audience participation that explores the way narratives can be revealed through a subtle interplay between artist, audience and environment.